October Moons

Chapter 2

Chapter 2Genevieve Holloway couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid.

Her hair was plastered to her back; her feet felt grainy and icky from the amount of sludge and grass stuck between her toes; and her lungs ached with exertion and four years of chain smoking while in university. This is your own fault, she reminded herself. She’d been running at full speed until she hit the dirt road back to her place, her shirt barely on her back and her pants barely done up, and all for a stupid ritual. And it wasn’t even for me! Not really, anyway. Gen was still too out of breath, too embarrassed to think of Sally. The full moon. And the fact that this would be the first October without her.

Gen’s pace slowed as she walked along the dirt road. She checked over her shoulder, but no one was around. You realize how foolish this is, right? She criticized herself. Being a trans woman in public is bad enough in this small town. Being buck naked in the creek, brandishing a pentacle, is enough to get everyone in full Satanic Panic mode. She shuddered. That was the last thing she needed right now. She straightened out her clothing and calmed herself down enough to take her apartment’s front steps two by two. Her feet ached from each slamming step, but she told herself to keep moving. She grabbed her keys, relieved to find them so fast, and slid them into the front lock. She ran all the way down the hall to her first-floor apartment and shut the door tight.

Her bird let out a loud cry as she entered. Her blue wings expanded until they were like the blue sky, and her beak was up and open in yet another cry.

“I know, Zeus.” Gen put a hand over her chest. Her heart was pounding, still, but she was safe. She said softer, “I know.”

Zeus calmed down in another moment. Her bird—really, Sally’s bird—was normally one of her favorite parts of her mornings. Since she often didn’t have to be at the vet until noon or even later for her night shift, it allowed her to easily wake up, drink her coffee, and maybe even have a one-sided conversation with her large blue and yellow macaw until it was time to go.

This morning, though, it was like Zeus knew. Sally was gone, and she’d been gone almost a year now. It was time to move on. As Gen grabbed her cup of coffee now, she turned back to the bird. She waited for Zeus to say something else.

“Come on,” she said. “You don’t have anything for me?”

She stared at her, beady eyes so dynamic, but utterly silent. Gen sighed. She could have sworn the bird had said “move on” when she came into the room. It was probably her normally trained Good morning and Gen had misheard it due to her heartbeat still pounding in her ear. But maybe not…She thought of all the things Sally had talked about in all their years together. Not just the woo-woo things like how astrology and crystals could cure, but about the things that seemed more universal about souls and reincarnation. Had Sally’s spirit gone into the bird? Was she still here now?

“Good morning!” Zeus cried out.

Gen jumped, still not fully recovered from her experience at the creek. She huffed. “No, definitely not a good morning, or anything else.”

She ran a shaky hand through her hair. She pulled out some silt and debris from the creek. After she’d finished her coffee, she debated whether she needed to call a ghost buster to get rid of Sally’s spirit or if she could just drink until she slept again. Both options were bad—but maybe her own ritual this morning hadn’t done the trick. Maybe it had made things worse.

Gen sighed as she sat at her small desk in the living room. This morning, when she’d woken at dawn with yet another dream about Sally, she knew something needed to change. She’d thought that maybe giving Sally a proper resting ritual would do the trick. So Gen had used her extra energy this morning to scour some of Sally’s witchcraft books she still didn’t have the heart to pack away. She gathered some of Sally’s tools, though the ritual itself called for very little. All she needed was a sprinkle of salt, a black cloth in which to make a bag, and one item of the deceased. The full moon, as the book said and Gen reviewed now, also helps but it is not a necessity. When Gen had peaked outside, and saw the bright full moon in the daylight hours, she knew that this was what she was supposed to do this morning. She’d walked down to the edge of the river, placed the black cloth into the shape of a pouch and Sally’s old necklace at the edge of the water after walking around the creek clockwise. She’d discarded her own clothing then, too, in order to dive into the water with the materials. The ritual had said it was necessary to physically get over the deceased’s items in order to get over them emotionally, and so Gen thought a swim was her best bet. And it’s always better when you’re naked in spellcraft.

That was what Sally would have told her if she was still around. Always better when you’re naked. Gen smiled at the memory of her girlfriend, though her foolish behavior from earlier still felt too close against her skin. She’d been seen. She’d been seen naked and doing a full-on pagan ritual, and now she was still waiting for the world to implode.

She was also remembering Sally in a completely new way. She’d been dead for a year now, gone in a sudden car crash, and while Gen had moved on in their shared apartment, she’d never really moved on. She hit pause on the good and the bad; she stopped thinking about how sweet Sally looked when she laughed, or how easily she messed up their kitchen every time she wanted to cook something. She stopped thinking about her books on the craft, even though they were everywhere, and that going skyclad for her rituals was just a fancy way of saying naked, and that Sally walked around without clothing all the damn time.

Gen had wanted to remember today. She had. And so, now there was only time left to forget.

“Good morning,” Zeus said again. The parrot tilted her head. She stared at Gen imploringly.

“You never said Move On, did you?”

“Good morning,” the parrot said again.

“Figured. Fool me once…” Gen sighed. She walked over to her cage and stuck her fingers into the bars so she could touch the feathers. Zeus moved into the action. Despite being a rescue bird, she was deeply friendly and affectionate. Hence her name, Zeus, since she seemed to want to love everyone and everything in spite of all logic. But with a bit more consent than the real Zeus, Sally had joked.

Real Zeus? Gen had said right back to her. It’s a myth.

It’s as real as you want it to be. And this Zeus is here, so she’s all ours.

Gen sighed. She marveled at the feeling of the feathers against her skin before she looked at the clock. Her morning was almost done, and the rest of her life—a life that had already gone on without Sally—needed to go back to normal again. “If there ever was such a thing,” Gen said aloud.

This time, Zeus said nothing back. Gen undressed in the front hall and walked into the shower, so she could wash the rest of the ritual down the drain.